Changes in usage patterns by customers of mobile wireless communications services, with an increased emphasis on smart phone-based data traffic as opposed to voice, have placed unprecedented demand upon underlying physical network infrastructures that support such services. Proliferation of smart phones, and their subsequent use to carry out high volume/data-rate communications—including streaming video transmissions—has resulted in exponential growth in the volume of data flowing over wireless networks. The substantial increased data transmission volume via existing physical networks is challenging the capabilities of the infrastructure to a degree that was not contemplated when mobile wireless services were primarily used to support voice communications. The increased volume of data communications presents a challenge for service providers who must ensure reliable mobile wireless service for most, if not all, users.
One area of mobile wireless network service optimization involves the transmitter components of the radio network. In particular, substantial resources are dedicated to ensuring proper radio signal quality, in particular a signal-to-noise ratio for radio transmissions (SNR), from cell towers on a sector-by-sector basis. Such radio network maintenance is facilitated by mobile wireless devices routinely acquiring SNR data and reporting the SNR data on a routine basis to respective service provider servers. This vast quantity of signal quality (e.g., SNR) data is mined and processed by the service providers to identify radio transmitters requiring remedial measures (e.g., adjustment of signal transmission power) to improve the signal quality (e.g., SNR) for a particular sector from which a high number of mobile wireless devices have reported low SNRs.
When carrying out remedial actions to counter frequent identification of a particular transmitter/sector having a low SNR, the intuitive response is to improve the signal having a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by increasing the power of the transmission. However, counter-intuitively, such action may result in even more instances of mobile wireless devices reporting a low SRN for transmissions by the particular transmitter/sector. Such is the case where the transmitter/sector is over-reaching. In other words, the transmitter/sector is being identified as present in geospatial locations that are well-covered by closer, more appropriate, radio towers. This phenomenon is referred to as “over-reaching” by a particular transmitter/sector. In such instances the preferable action taken to reduce the power of the over-reaching transmitter to reduce/eliminate its detection by mobile wireless devices in regions handled in a satisfactory manner by other transmitters. The challenge is thus to reliably distinguish between instances of compiled mobile wireless SNR data indicative of a need to increase transmission signal power and SNR data indicative of over-reaching transmissions where the proper remedy is possibly to reduce power of the transmitter.